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An easy fix for YouTube

As I mentioned last week, YouTube has a problem, a very big problem.

Big-dollar advertisers are pulling their advertising for fear that their branding will appear alongside videos that might promote hate, racism, terrorism or other undesirable topics.

YouTube has responded (in typical YouTube fashion) by implementing badly flawed mechanisms for trying to automatically check for such content and "demonetize" those videos.

So now we have the advertisers bitching that they don't want to be seen alongside unsavoury content and the content producers bitching that YouTube is depriving them of revenues by demonetizing completely innocuous videos simply because the automated process is flawed.

How easy is it to trick the YouTube systems?

Well according to The Telegraph, it's a piece of cake.

So what can YouTube do to please both the advertisers and the content producers -- given that it is totally reliant on the support of both groups for its very existence?

Well I've got an idea and it's a really simple one...

Wind the clock back a few years and re-introduce the YouTube Partner programme.

When I first started monetizing my YouTube videos, the privilege wasn't available to everyone. You had to prove your worth by having at least 1,500 subscribers and a pretty good total view count -- which meant a reasonable catalog of content.

Only then would you be allowed to monetize your content and get a share of YouTube's ad revenues.

Things were actually pretty good for all concerned back then...

Content producers could earn acceptable amounts of money for their efforts because the ad-revenue pie was split over a much smaller number of channels.

Advertisers could be safe in the knowledge that "YouTube Channel Partners" had been vetted to ensure that they were creating content that was family-friendly and "safe" for their advertising.

Regular YouTube viewers were happy that not every single 1 minute video had a 30 second unskippable pre-roll ad in front of it.

So what went wrong?

Well YouTube got greedy.

They decided that they would allow every man, dog and terrorist to monetize their videos because that would be a real windfall. Imagine... now there was a much, much larger inventory of videos against which ads could be placed so they had more product to sell. What's more, the vast majority (at least 99%) of all channels would only qualify for a payout less than once a year (the $100 threshold of earnings) which meant that YouTube would be sitting on many, many millions of dollars owed to these small channels for many months at a time. Just the interest on that money soon adds up to a sizable sum.

Unfortunately, that greed has now come back to bite YouTube on the bum and they're losing big-name advertisers hand over fist.

So my call to YouTube is... go back to the past. Re-instate your Channel Partner programme and watch how your woes melt away.

*EVERYONE* will be a whole lot happier -- including your own beancounters.

Haters, racists and extremists simply won't qualify for the partnership so when they upload their dross, there will be no ads attached and advertisers will be happy.

The reduced inventory of adspace will mean that prices will rise and the earnings of folk like myself who are full-time Tubers will be restored to its former sustainable level.

The great unwashed who make up the YouTube audience will be overjoyed that they're not subjected to an inordinately high level of ads on every single video.

Epic win!

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